Delivery Accident - 7
"Young Master Kang! Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you!"
Seeing that the commotion seemed to have settled, I made my way slowly toward the crowd.
"Is it all over?"
"The Nokcheong Escort Agency's men have already been subdued, but......"
The branch manager of the Seocheon Escort Agency turned his head with a troubled expression and looked toward the warehouse.
"Did you think we'd open it that eeeeeeeasily?!"
There, the Nokcheong Escort Chief and a handful of his escorts knelt with great difficulty, blades still clutched in their hands.
Good grief. Their bodies were painted in blood, their clothes hanging off them in rags, and still they refused to go down.
"Why are they like that?"
"The Chief and the escort leaders are holding out, insisting the warehouse must never be opened."
"Heh heh. You bastards put on such respectable faces, but the moment the numbers don't add up, you reach for force! Seocheon Escort Agency! Mangeum Jeonjang! If you want it opened so badly, cut off our heads and open it yourselves!"
The Chief spat bloody foam and glared like a man ready to kill at the warrior who appeared to be Mangeum Jeonjang's representative.
"We only intend to verify the contents."
The Mangeum Jeonjang warrior, able neither to advance nor retreat, looked back and forth between our side and the Chief.
"The warehouse is the heart of an escort agency! To you, opening it is nothing! To us, it is like being asked to tear out that very heart!"
Even I would have said the same in his place. A genuinely awkward situation, this — even Mangeum Jeonjang was dragging its feet about opening the warehouse door.
Difficult indeed.
Today's objective was the subjugation of the Nokcheong Escort Agency, not its annihilation.
The present standoff was much like an outsider demanding to peek inside a private vault. If they had nothing to hide, most people would say, what's the harm in a quick look? But for an escort agency, this touched the very foundation of its credibility.
I already knew what lay inside that warehouse — but the proper order was to expose the wrongdoing first and punish the crime after, not to punish the crime and only then reveal the wrongdoing.
Hold on a moment. Expose the wrongdoing?
Let me take stock of my surroundings.
The Escort Chief and his escorts, guarding the warehouse. Mangeum Jeonjang's warriors watching from a distance — and thanks to them, a broad stretch of no-man's-land had opened up in the middle.
This just might work.
"Seocheon escorts, the threat is gone now, so please gather up the passersby for me."
I quickly called over the Seocheon escorts nearby and told them what I needed.
"Pardon? Why the passersby?"
Why, you ask?
"Because the slander the Nokcheong Escort Agency spread needs to be buried under a tale of virtue, and quickly."
A way to swiftly restore trust once lost — and to open that warehouse for a look without drawing a single blade.
If such a way existed, wasn't pursuing it simply our duty?
It was time, after far too long, for the street storyteller Kang Yunho to deploy.
"The heart of the Nokcheong Escort Agency will never be surrendered!"
By the time the standoff had stretched a while, the passersby who had been drifting about after hearing the uproar had gathered into a crowd.
First things first — time to set the Soyun Mind Image Art in motion.
Vitality surged through my whole body as I stepped briskly into the no-man's-land. The instant I popped out ahead of the line, I felt every gaze in the square swing my way.
Without missing a beat, I let my voice out — low and deliberate, pitched to reach every ear present.
One always opens with the famed words of Zhuge Liang.
"If you want the warehouse opened! Then take our heads! What—! No! It's you!"
The Chief had recognized my face, and his features twisted on the spot.
So he intended to keep staking his neck on keeping that door shut, did he?
"Then I shall stake my neck on this: my cargo lies within that warehouse."
In that case, I would just as boldly offer up my own.
"Young Master Kang!"
Startled cries burst out on all sides.
"A Joseon man? Who is he?"
The passersby laying eyes on me for the first time began murmuring among themselves, faces full of curiosity.
"I am called Kang Yunho of Daseogak. Since I led this affair, I too shall stake my neck."
"So it's you?! You dare snatch up the living?!!!"
The enraged Chief tried to rise, but he had bled too heavily; he swayed and crumpled back onto his knees.
That gave me a jolt. I nearly turned tail right there.
Without letting my alarm show, I drew a fan from my robe. It was a hapjokseon — a folding fan of bamboo splints and mulberry paper — the sort of piece that looked exquisitely refined to any eye.
Snap!
Feel how it settles into the hand. A man really does need his fan when it's time to tell a tale.
I snapped the fan open, then shut, and every gaze in the crowd converged on me once more.
"'Snatch up the living'?! Do the good people gathered here also look to you like folk I've snatched up?"
The fan was out; now to set the tale in motion.
With an air of perfect composure, I put the question to the audience watching me.
"......"
The escorts and Mangeum Jeonjang might know the story, but the audience clearly hadn't the faintest idea what was going on.
In that case, we would begin with the circumstances.
"Not long ago! Men who were fathers! Husbands! Sons! Escorts of the Seocheon Escort Agency! Never returned to the arms of their families! For upon that ship, they were set upon by savage beasts!"
A writer I might be these days, but the instincts of my old trade do not fade so easily.
Phrase by phrase, I raised and lowered my voice, launching into the account with the flourishes peculiar to a street storyteller.
"Ah! The ghost ship from yesterday!"
"Wasn't that the one where the Seocheon Escort Agency was hit by river pirates and nothing but a ghost ship was left?"
Excellent. Just as I thought — a story no one had managed not to hear.
"But how on earth! They were never attacked from outside! Nor did their enemies slip in among the cargo! So how did the Seocheon escorts fall so utterly helpless?!"
One step further now — lead them by the nose into curiosity.
"Hmmm......"
I let the silence stretch, waiting until I saw questions flicker across my audience's faces before opening my mouth again.
"The sailors' own cargo! The mysterious attackers hid themselves inside the bundles that went barely inspected! And lay in wait for their moment! And who would know better than anyone that the sailors' cargo goes all but unwatched? Why, only a fellow escort!"
"You set upon us over a flimsy pretext like that?!"
The Chief roared his objection at my answer.
Oh, there's more.
What I was performing right now was maedam — the street storyteller's trade.
Curiosity stoked, it was time to add some real craft to the tale.
"The Seocheon escorts! Any ordinary man, in his dying moments, would have thought only of his family! But! Our Seocheon escorts! Even with death upon them! Made a great resolve — to leave word of where the cargo lay!"
Clutching my chest, I screwed up my face like a man steeling himself for the final act of his life.
"What resolve?"
"Hair severed in the heat of battle! They swallowed down a fistful of that green hair!"
Thus a simple eyewitness account became a stirring legend of devotion.
What mattered was the green hair, not the trimmings.
I scattered the green hair I had gathered beforehand across the ground where the audience could see it.
A dying escort leaving behind evidence for his comrades. That single tale of devotion would advertise to the world just how remarkable the Seocheon escorts were.
"Swallowed green hair?"
"That's right! That way the evidence remains even after death!"
"A Seocheon escort would go so far as that......"
"Look there! His hair's been shorn!"
Where the man pointed stood a green-haired escort leader with a fistful of his hair hacked away.
"Th-this was cut just now!"
It was no use. Once I had made my claim, anything out of his mouth could only sound like an excuse.
"You suspected us over such a pathetic scrap of reasoning?! There's green hair aplenty in this world!"
A fair point. I nodded along with the Chief's words, then turned and leveled my fan at him.
"Your aim was to moor that ghost ship and announce to all of Wuhan that the Seocheon Escort Agency had failed its commission. Your plan was flawless! But Heaven looked down upon it — and withheld its sanction."
I swept my fan up toward the heavens, then brought it back down to point at the Chief.
"What is that supposed to—?!"
"The eldest son of one of your victims saw you at the docks."
"What?!"
The tale had its mystery and its craft — now it was time to add the heart.
I turned to face the audience and began to pace, my brow knotted in the very picture of grief.
"Waking and sleeping, he longed for his father. A boy who would never see his father come home! Not knowing the truth, he kept waiting at the docks! And by the sheerest chance, he glimpsed the direction in which the green-haired men hauled off their cargo and departed — and came and told me!"
In truth, it was the Haomen who had told me.
"Good heavens!"
"Khh! To think such a thing!"
As if the boy were their own flesh and blood, the audience could not hide their sorrow.
"A hundred roads lead away from the docks! Green hair is common as weeds! That proves nothing!"
Man may plot and scheme, but it is Heaven that decides what comes to pass. The celebrated words of Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms — that nothing can be forced.
"What?"
The Chief said, utterly lost.
"Did I not tell you? That day, Heaven watched your wickedness to the very end — and refused to let it be done."
"What the hell kind of nonsense is that?!"
"Because yesterday, Heaven shed its tears."
This sort of thing always works — just bellow 'Heaven will not forgive you, wretches!' and the trust comes flooding in.
"Tears? Don't tell me...... the rain?"
"The rain that fell the night before! There were no cart tracks from the cargo at the docks that day! Which means they drove the direction the boy pointed — along a paved road!"
With my fan I first indicated the gate that opened onto the paved road, then let the point drift slowly around to this very spot.
Some of you have already caught on to what this gesture means, haven't you?
"Huh? No — don't tell me?!"
"Wait! The Nokcheong Escort Agency is the one with a paved road running all the way from the docks to its gates!"
There it is.
Like a master detective proclaiming that there is only ever one truth, I strode boldly toward the Escort Chief.
Panic flashed across the Chief's face. It was over.
Pointing my hapjokseon at the one and only culprit, I opened my mouth for the final declaration.
"A place that knows the escort trade inside and out! A place stripped of all its contracts by the Seocheon Escort Agency and nursing the grudge for it! A place with every motive to moor that ghost ship and proclaim to all of Wuhan that Seocheon had failed its commission! A place whose escorts wear green hair! And of all the escort agencies lying along the paved road in the direction the slain escort's son pointed — there is only!!! ONE!!!"
"It can't be?!"
"WhaaAAAt?!"
"The Nokcheong Escort Agency! The place that harbors men with the hearts not of humans, but of beasts — is right here!"
"Guhk!"
In the end, the Chief could raise no rebuttal against my brilliant deduction.
Never mind that I had known the answer from the start and merely fit the pieces around it.
Like a single arrow flying for the heart of evil, I leveled my fan at the warehouse.
"Open the heart of these beasts! Reveal their crimes before all the world!"
It was over now, you rabid animal.
"You basTAAAARD! This is your doing!"
"Young Master Kang!"
"Look out!"
Oops. That possibility had slipped my mind.
Swept up in the performance, I had wandered in far too close to the Chief.
The kneeling Chief sprang up like a released coil and slashed his blade at me.
This was the master who led an entire escort agency.
In a heartbeat the distance had closed to the tip of my nose. One breath more, and I'd be leaving a limb behind.
"Gwahk!!!"
Or so it would have gone, anyway.
Pop. With a crack like a cork bursting from a bottle, hidden projectiles shot from the tip of my fan.
Faster than the Chief's eyes could widen, five hidden projectiles buried themselves in his chest all at once.
"Young Master Kang subdued the Escort Chief with his fan!"
"Good heavens!"
Against a man drenched head to toe in blood, without a single unbroken spot left on him?
The Sichuan Tang Clan's hidden projectiles are more than sufficient.
"Here! The stolen cargo is right here!"
"So the Nokcheong Escort Agency really was behind it!"
The moment the warehouse doors swung open, the beasts' crimes were laid bare with almost embarrassing ease.
At the sight, the crowd marveled at one young man's deduction — and turned their eyes once more to the black-haired youth.
"Incredible!"
"To think he subdued a master with nothing but a fan!"
It had all happened at far too close a range.
The martial artists on the scene had all watched Kang Yunho bring the Chief down with hidden projectiles, but to the passersby it looked for all the world as though the black-haired master had felled the famous Escort Chief with his fan alone.
"He barely looks past twenty! And he subdues a villain like that!"
In truth, none of that mattered much.
A man exposing and punishing the villains who had murdered escorts and extorted their cargo.
That sight drew gasps of admiration from Mangeum Jeonjang, from the Seocheon Escort Agency, and from the passersby alike.
And there was one more soul marveling at the scene.
"Young Masterrrrr Kang!"
The treasured jewel of the Jegal Clan. Jegal Hyang, cheeks flushed pink, had been there all along, calling out to Kang Yunho.
"Miss Jegal! So there you are!"
The moment Kang Yunho spotted Jegal Hyang, he came toward her with a warm, easy smile.
'Young Masterrrr Kang suddenly looks so, so talllll.'
No, no, no. He always looks tall, but today he looks even taller stilllll. Jegal Hyang simply could not tear her eyes away from Kang Yunho.
Holding the stares of a hundred people on his shoulders alone, yet smiling without a trace of strain, his tongue wrapping the crowd around his finger.
The will to voice his convictions and see them through. And the skill to reward every expectation placed upon him.
Kang Yunho had just shown her the very sight Jegal Hyang admired most in this world.
"Miss Jegal. Are you hurt anywhere?"
Jegal Hyang could only stare blankly at the man standing before her.
There were plainly dozens of people around them, and yet it felt as if there were no one at all. Any other day she would have fled to hide somewhere, but today she didn't even feel the urge.
It was as if the world held only Kang Yunho and her. In Jegal Hyang's eyes, there was only one person.
I have to be braveee. Clutching her hammering heart with all her strength, she spoke to Kang Yunho in a voice that seemed ready to melt.
"Young Masterrrr Kang. Please, let's keep an exchange diarrrryyyyy."